Having grown up in Lithuania I personally received almost zero sexual education. In contrast, Denmark and Scandinavia can truly be called pioneers of it when Sweden became the first European country to establish compulsory sexuality education in all schools since So, I decided to dig deeper into this and compare historical backgrounds and attitudes now about sex work in Lithuania and Denmark. First, I ask the differences between sex work, prostitution and escort services? What is a historical background of both of these countries towards sexuality and sex work?
What is the statistics of sex workers? Then, what is an image of a sex worker in both countries? Are there any similarities between both of them? What does society think about sex workers in each country? I will also investigate legal background towards sex wor kers in both countries with a look on so-called Nordic model. Lastly, it is important to answer what is the general picture of prostitution today in Denmark and Lithuania, and how is the field discussed politically?
How can we understand the current situation in the light of different political, ideological or social traditions in both countries? As mentioned before, most of the work by researchers from Lithuania has been done in a moralistic framework, labelling sex workers as degrade people and not looking into this from a broader anthropological or sociological perspective. Upcoming presidential election in also raised important questions about education, including sexual education, LGBT rights.
First time in many years politicians started to talk about decriminalizing sex work. Lithuanians often regard Scandinavian countries as a role model dealing with sexual issues, included sexual education and LGBT rights.
Scandinavian societies are certainly admirable in many respects, but adoption of this model could lead to a disaster in a different, post -soviet society. Comparing these two different and maybe at the same time, related countries will let us see the advantages and disadvantages of each of them and critically evaluate Denmark views on sex work, rather than blindly using it as a goal.
